Did you know that there is a tool called Microsoft ClipBook Viewer utility in Windows XP? Maybe not all of you because it is a hidden utility that is not in Start Menu. Moreover the XP ClipBook Viewer has been removed in Vista. When you cut or copy information from a program, it is moved to the Clipboard and remains there until you clear the Clipboard or until you cut or copy another piece of information. The Clipboard window in ClipBook Viewer shows the contents of the Clipboard. You can paste the information from the Clipboard into any file as often as you like. To launch the ClipBook Viewer in XP, go to Run, type clipbrd and click OK.

Clipboard Vista

There are limitations in the built-in Windows XP Clipboard utility. It can only capture text but not images. The contents of the standard Windows clipboard doesn’t store your clipboard data for a long time. When you turn off the computer or just copy some other text, the data is lost.

I bet you must have experienced the need of the text that you copied 30 minutes or an hour ago. Maybe your computer hung and the program hasn’t saved the data, or maybe you copied some interesting information from a web page, but got distracted and forgot to paste it where you wanted? Or you may simply want to recall what you were doing at the computer a month or a year ago. There are many cases in which you might want to review your clipboard content. So here are 10 free XP ClipBook Viewer replacement.

1. Ditto
Ditto Clipboard
Ditto is an extension to the standard windows clipboard. It saves each item placed on the clipboard allowing you access to any of those items at a later time. Ditto allows you to save any type of information that can be put on the clipboard, text, images, html, custom formats and etc.
[ Download Ditto ]

2. ClipX
ClipX
ClipX is a tiny clipboard history manager, it can be recalled via a hotkey and supports both bitmap and text clipboards. ClipX is very unobstrusive and will change the way you think about clipboard operations. Takes up only 0.6MB memory. Press Ctrl + Shift + V to bring up the clipboard history and enter the number to paste them directly inside your favorite editor.
[ Download ClipX ]

3. Clipdiary
ClipDiary
Clipdiary runs on Windows startup, will record everything copied on the clipboard into the its database. Clipdiary can log clipboard history and record data in several formats: plain text, RTF (Rich Text Format) and images (BMP), html, files and so on. So, besides saving parts of text, you can easily make series of screenshots, and Clipdiary will save them for you.
[ Download Clipdiary ]

4. Yankee Clipper 3
Yankee Clipper 3
A powerful Windows clipboard extender/memory- now in its third generation. Handles Pictures, Richtext, URLS, etc – any size. Features printing, drag and drop, optional permanent storage of clippings. Familiar “Outlook” interface. Freeware.
[ Download Yankee Clipper 3 ]

5. Clipomatic
Clipomatic
Clipomatic is a clipboard cache program. It remembers what was copied to the clipboard and allows you to retrieve it, even after you’ve copied something else to the clipboard. Clipomatic only works with text. It works on any modern version of Windows. Only takes up 0.5MB from memory. Default hotkey to bring up the clipboard history is Ctrl+Alt+V and can easily select the data with numbers.
[ Download Clipomatic ]

6. QClip
QClip
QClip is a simple clipboard enhancement that allows Windows users to paste text that was clipped earlier. You never have to think about QClip, but when you want to paste something that you clipped a while ago instead of CTRL-V, just press CTRL-ALT-V and QClip will appear with all of your old clips. You can use the arrow keys to select the item you want, then press “Enter”, or use the mouse and click the “Paste” button. QClip only stores plain text clips, and the history is cleared when you reboot or exit QClip. If you find that QClip is no longer receiving clips, right-click the scissors icon in the system tray and select “Reset”. This will cause QClip to re-register for clips with Windows.
[ Download QClip ]

7. ClipGuru
ClipGuru
ClipGuru is for the Windows user who prefers clipboard storage features unavailable in the standard Windows clipboard. ClipGuru gives users the ability to recall and reuse current and past clipboard contents, and to optionally save those clips into your own clip Sets for future use. ClipGuru runs in the background and does not affect the normal use of the Windows clipboard. It simply grabs a copy of everything copied to the clipboard and saves it for you. Clipboard items are saved, based on user preference, and kept available for recall at any time.
[ Download ClipGuru ]

8. Clipboard Magic
Clipboard Magic
Clipboard Magic is a Windows clipboard enhancement utility. This clipboard extender can dramatically enhance your productivity when cutting and pasting text or when filling in repetitive web forms.
Note: Clipboard Magic is buggy and I couldn’t get it to work properly.
[ Download Clipboard Magic ]

9. ArsClip
ArsClip
ArsClip is a FREE (freeware) utility for the windows clipboard. ArsClip monitors the clipboard and keeps track of the entries. Press a configurable hotkey and select an item (or items) to quickly paste into a program.
[ Download ArsClip ]

10. Clipboard Caching Tool (CLCL)
Clipboard Caching Tool CLCL
CLCL is a clipboard caching tool, that automatically stores all items that have been copied to the Windows clipboard, allowing you to easily go back and retrieve images, text or other objects. You can also maintain a list of permanent items (Template), that can be used to quickly insert frequently used text snippets, images or other clipboard objects. The clipboard items can be accessed from the system tray or a categorized interface. The functionality can be further extended with several plug-ins, that include some text processing options like upper/lower case conversion, adding tags, removing quotes and more. Overall, this is a quite capable little program, but it does not include documentation, and is aimed at more technical users.
[ Download Clipboard Caching Tool ]

A good clipboard manager software must be small in memory usage since it will be running all the time to capture all our clipboard data. It should have a customizable hotkey for us to easily bring out a list of recent clipboard data and can paste the data to a target by pressing the numbers. Finally, it also logs the date/time/location where it got the data from. So far only Clipboard Caching Tool (CLCL) is able to fulfill all the requirements above. CLCL takes up 5MB of memory usage, has customizable hotkeys and easy pasting of recent saved clipboards using numbers to target and also date/time/window of the clipboard being recorded.

Technorati Tags: , , , ,